by Peter Carey
Jack Maggs fetched his boots which he had left standing by the hearth. They were not the dead man’s shoes, but his own comfortable hessians, which had been made by an old hunch-backed cobbler in Paramatta.
“Are you going to bolt?”
She was a nosy little mite. He tied the green-hide laces tight and double-knotted them. Then he turned so he might privately slip his dagger into its nesting place beside his right ankle.
“Don’t bolt,” she said. “You are safer here with us.”
Jack Maggs took the little creature by her wagging chin. He held her hard, his thumb and forefinger clamping her around her jaw bone. “They sent you here to delay me while they fetched the peelers.”
Now she saw what sort of man he was. He had her in his clamp, and her eyes were urgent in their plea.
“Think clearly, Sir. Why would I delay you when I knew you would delay yourself, when I knew you would sit up here all night dreaming in this very chair?”
He let her go, but not happily. He stoppered his ink bottle and dropped it in his pocket. He picked up the quill then threw it down. He was in no way certain about how he should proceed.
“Mr Buckle had a sister,” she said, “who he loved most dearly. This sister was transported to Botany Bay.”
On hearing this, the quality of his attention changed. She seemed to see this. “He wept to see your injuries. And he wept again when he told me. He could not read me another word of his Ivanhoe. He was so upset by what you had suffered.”
Jack Maggs then sat down behind his desk. Mercy Larkin sat simultaneously, in a gilt chair whose seat was embroidered with a hunting scene.
“We wept together,” she said.
“Did you, girlie?”
“Your secret is safe,” she insisted.
“Being known only,” he said bitterly, “to the master and the household staff?”
“I am not the household staff. They call me a maid, but that is not my true position in the household. I have known Mr Buckle since I was a child. He has read to me for ever so long a time.”
“You are shivering.”
“It isn’t right that you frighten me.”
“I ain’t going to hurt you.” He offered her a blanket—the grey one under which he sometimes slept. “But you must tell me the truth. What is it that the gentlemen have said about me?”
“Mr Oates used the Magnetism,” she said. “He has little magnets the size of pennies.”
“That much I know.”
“The magnets are attached to your soul. They are like a poultice . . .”
“This I know.”
“And with the magnets he dragged your soul to the other side of the world and persuaded you that it was summer and so you took off your shirt in the presence of a lady and cried out to see a fellow who was to be flogged. You described a foreign bird. You were often angry and cursed God. You gave yourself away and now they know you are a convict escaped from New South Wales.”
“The bastard.”
“You are wrong. He is as decent a master as you could ever find.”
“Not him, the other. The smarmy bastard hid this from me.”
“They dared not tell you,” cried Mercy. “They thought they would be murdered in their beds. Mr Oates has a wife and a child, and now it seems that if you have escaped they also have broke the law for arboring you.”
“Harbouring.”
“Yes. It is a very dark secret. Mr Buckle himself could be sent to Newgate.”
He did not know what he should do with her. She seemed aware of this, for when she spoke again she leaned out and touched his sleeve.
“You can depend your life on us,” she said. “We are your friends.”
He was sick at heart but he let her go without damage or threat. He escorted her up the stairs, and locked the dormer window closed behind her.
29
OUTSIDE THE HOUSE, there was a great wind storm. In the dim drawing room of Jack Maggs’s dream, a man in uniform was sitting in the shadows.
Is it you?
It is I, answered the Phantom.
Maggs rolled himself tight inside his tartan rug while his dreaming eyes attempted to make out the fellow’s regiment. The Phantom, as if sensing his intention, lit a gas lamp which flared so brightly that the sleeper brought up his hand to cover his eyes.
It was a uniform made to protect the King himself. The jacket was ultramarine, the trousers black, and underneath his arm he held a bell-topped shako.
I am in the 15th Hussies, said the Phantom.
Hussars, said Jack.
Hussies, insisted the Phantom, opening a great-coat to reveal a naked female form, a soft bush of hair and such sweet little breasts with soft rosy nipples.
Very funny, said Jack, smiling in his sleep. He knew it was a dream. He knew the breasts would not be there if he reached for them, but might remain if he were still. He was very warm and comfortable. The bright light of the gas warmed his cheek.
That gas is a bleeding marvel.
No gas here, said the Phantom.
Jack looked to the lamp. It was still burning bright. Behind it were trays of fishes, their scales gleaming in the artificial glare.
I thought it was gas.
No gas here.
It then became very dark. Something was brushed lightly over Jack’s face. He could smell the leather. He knew what it was: a horse’s bridle.
You like to ride, Jack?
The bridle crossed his face again.
Yes, Sir.
I’m heading up towards Mount Irwin. You can use a theodolite, I think?
Is that Captain Logan?
In his dream, Jack Maggs saw himself still smiling. When he stepped forward to look at the Phantom’s face, he saw he was the spitting image of Captain Logan.
I thought you was dead.
Not me, said the Phantom, who no longer looked like Logan. His hair was fair. He was much younger. But the uniform was the 57th Foot Regiment and the bridle was not a bridle.
We’re going to do a spot of mapping, Sir?
But Jack felt the cold empty terror in his gut. There would be no mapping. This was not a bridle.
One hundred lashes, cried Captain Logan, and lay them on until I see the bone.
Maggs was standing, then he was falling. He could not bear to be seen in such a state. He walked past Parker’s Hut. Ahead, at the archway of the prisoners’ barracks where the cursed triangle stood, Rudder, the flogger, was standing at attention.
Weeping, Jack Maggs turned to the Phantom, and begged him to show mercy. Then the Phantom turned away, leading his horse by its bridle along a path, and Jack picked up a great round rock and brought it down upon the Phantom’s head. The Phantom fell and the dreaming man lifted the rock high and flung it down onto the head so it split like rotten fruit. This action he repeated a good long while.
In London, the wind shook the windows in their frames.
30
PERCY BUCKLE DID truly wish he had a better choice than to give shelter to the convict. This is not to say that his resolve to harbour Jack Maggs weakened, but that it was a resolve bought at the cost of the peace which had finally come to him with his inheritance.
Now Mr Buckle could no longer sleep and, sadly, it had become normal that, one hour after midnight, he should still be needful of the company of her whom he called My Good Companion.
Mercy, still wearing her maid’s apron but not her bonnet, sat herself at her master’s feet. He was distracted, fretful, forever putting down one volume to pick up another. Tonight it had been Ivanhoe first, then that long piece of Hazlitt’s, the one about the young lady which brought him such discredit at the time, and then—for the Hazlitt made Mercy most impatient—the French novel by Madame Valli which was called, by its English publisher, Imogene.
It was at that point, when he had finally arrived at the French novel and thereby gained his Good Companion’s rapt attention, that he imagined he heard the footsteps on the stair.
&nbs
p; “Hark,” he cried, and leapt up, his hand at his ear.
“ ’Twas nothing,” said Mercy. “Read on.”
“It’s him,” he said, and laid aside the book.
“Lord,” cried Mercy, “do you fancy he roams the house all night plotting ways to murder us? If that is so then he must be very feeble-witted because he has had a whole week and neither of us has suffered so much as a scratch.”
“Shush, there he goes.”
“This is even worse than Hasluck.”
“Hazlitt!” said Percy Buckle. He set down the gaudy blue novel and strapped on the short sword which had been part of the general jumble of his inheritance.
Mercy stared helplessly at the open pages of the discarded book. After a short while she managed to unlock the mysteries of the word ballroom.
“’Tis the wind,” she said.
“Not the wind,” said the little man, retying his smoking jacket and drawing the short sword. “Snuff the candle.”
Mercy, most reluctantly, did as she was bid.
Ever so slowly, Percy Buckle opened his bedroom door, and stood silently in the dark, trying to make out the noises of the house.
He was a man of small stature, no more than five foot and two inches tall. He had a weak chest and some arthritis in his hands, but in his occupation as a seller of fried fish, he had known no choice except to stand up to those who would rob, steal and otherwise bully him. Now, with his heart beating so hard he could barely hear another thing, he descended the stairs in the night with his sword drawn.
“Who’s there?” he cried.
No answer.
The night was not completely dark. The clouds scudding over London sometimes revealed the moon and it was by this erratic illumination that Mr Buckle found his way into his hallway, and then down the little breakneck stairs into the kitchen.
It was darker now and yet he was aware, half-way down those stairs, of the presence of another.
“Who’s there?” he cried.
He heard a small sound—not the wind or the window—which produced, in his mind, the picture of a dagger handle knocking against a dresser.
He stared down into the darkness towards a place where the blackness was knotted hard together, like ink poured into ink. It shifted as he stared at it.
“I see you,” said Mr Buckle. “Defend yourself, for my sword is drawn.”
“Begging your pardon,” said a familiar voice.
“Maggs?”
“Yes, Mr Buckle. It is I.”
This answer did not appease Mr Buckle in the slightest. The hairs on his neck straightened themselves once more, and he felt that deathly prickling sensation all the way down his spine. “Maggs, what are you doing in my kitchen?”
“I am eating a cheese sandwich,” said the voice. “For I am very hungry to have missed my dinner. I had no meaning to frighten you, but your Mrs Halfstairs had me deliver your parcel to Mr Hawthorne at the Adelphi Theatre. I had to wait for him an hour, and when I was back the dinner was all done.”
“But we would feed you, man,” cried Percy Buckle. “Good grief, we do not mean to starve you. But we do not like you to creep around the house like a thief.”
“Now I am like a thief?”
“Why did you not light a candle?”
“I can see in the dark.”
Mr Buckle said nothing.
“Because I was a thief. Did you know that?”
“No, Maggs, I did not.”
“Are you sure?” inquired the other, in a very low voice that made Mr Buckle’s skin creep.
“Yes, very sure. I swear I did not.”
“In any case, I would not have broke your lock, Mr Buckle.”
“Thank you, Maggs, that’s very decent.”
“I would not have broke your lock on account of—it would not have been worth my while.”
“Well, yes, I’m sure,” said Mr Buckle, quickly. “But a thief could not know such a thing from the street.”
“He would need only look into your kitchen window.”
“My kitchen window? And what would he see there?”
“The Trafalgar Doulton.”
“The Trafalgar Doulton?”
“Trafalgar Doulton in the kitchen dresser. I would know that I would not find valuable silver plate and Trafalgar Doulton in the same household. But I can see I have frightened you. I am sorry. I can make a light now. Would you like me to light a candle now?”
“You know that about the Doulton?”
“Oh yes, Sir. It would be a rule.”
“And they have those . . . rules, in that line of work?”
“Would you like me to find a candle for you?”
“I have dined in houses, with most distinguished gentlemen,” said Percy Buckle, “amongst the most wealthy type, and they are all for the Trafalgar Doulton.”
“Perhaps things have changed in my absence. I was abroad, Sir, as you may have been told.”
A long silence.
“A chap might guess it, Maggs, that you had been abroad.” Percy Buckle stared into the blackness. The denser part of it was moving. “What are you doing?” he cried.
“I am putting the cheese away.”
“Yes, good,” said Percy Buckle. “We can talk about your travels at another time. But for now, get you to your bed quickly, Maggs, for tomorrow we will need your good strong arm around the household.”
And thus he made his rapid way up into his sanctuary and there he bolted fast the door.
The room was now in darkness. He found his way into his bed, and into the sleepy arms of his Good Companion.
“Was it him?”
“Hush, talk in my ear. Yes, it was he.”
“He did not murder you?”
“He may not be a murderer, but he admits he is a thief. He told me, as bold as brass. He said, I am a thief and a very good thief too. He told me all the business of thieves, what they steal and what they will not.”
“Then he is an honest man.”
“He was drunk. I have been too soft with him.”
“And what great crime was he committing?”
“Hush, Mercy. He was making a cheese sandwich.”
“Do you wish your own sandwich?”
“You are a dear girl,” said Percy Buckle, and was mostly quiet for a minute or so. Then he gave a little sigh.
“Like so?” said she.
“Turn over,” said he.
“You should say, Turn over, my pretty one.”
“Yes,” said Percy Buckle, busying his face in all that coal-black hair. “Turn over my pretty one, and raise your sweet white bottom in the air.”
And thus for some little while the master did manage to take his mind off the Trafalgar Doulton, and the possibility that a creature other than a cat could see in the dark.
31
SAID MARY OATES: “Your father says you are snubbing your old friends in Fleet Street.”
Her husband was surprised to hear her say such a thing, not least because he had entered the dark bedroom imagining that she was finally asleep.
“He says you imagine that the Press is now beneath you.”
“Mary,” he whispered, “it is after midnight.”
“He says that you never reply to the Chronicle when they telegram you.”
“For God’s sake. My father is a fool.”
“So you often say, dear.”
Toby turned to the rattling window and looked down into Lamb’s Conduit Street. The wind, which had been blowing from the east in the earlier part of the night, had now changed quarter to come howling down from the north, driving an empty barrel right down the centre of the road.
“When did you talk to my father?”
“He came this afternoon to take the painting.”
“What painting?”
“The Maclise.”
“Good Lord,” he cried.
“Shush. You’ll wake John.”
“Mary, you did not let my father steal our painting?”
“No, no,” she said, sitting up in the bed. “He is to have it cleaned by an old fellow down in Whitechapel. It is all the smoke from the fireplace at Furnival’s Inn. He has spoken to you about it.”
“Oh dear God.”
“Toby, don’t go on so. I’m sure he’ll bring it back again.”
“Then you know better than I,” said Toby, much irritated. He had been counting on being able to sell it himself. “My father will tell any untruth to get his hands on money.”
“But it is not untrue that the Chronicle has been asking for you, Toby.”
Tobias was not happy to hear mention of the Chronicle. On two occasions, in the first weeks of their marriage, Mary had offered opinions about his business dealings, and he had very firmly insisted that a husband’s work was his own affair.
“The Chronicle is very eager that you write for them.”
“And I am too busy to oblige them.”
There was a silence then. He felt her hardening in the dark. This capacity for hostility had shown itself repeatedly of late. Indeed, as she now turned violently in the bed, he felt he must revise his understanding of the maternal character he had presumed to know so well.
“Too busy playing knucklebones,” she muttered.
“My dearest,” he began. In spite of all the irritation that had seized him, Tobias put his hand gently upon her plump shoulder. “My dearest, I did not play knucklebones. Is that what you imagined? That I was playing games with Jack Maggs?”
“You told me yourself.”
“Then you misunderstood me, dearest. It was a game of knucklebones played in the last century, in Pepper Alley Stairs. I found it in my Somnambulist’s memory. He could play the bones and describe the very floor he played it on. I have just finished recording all this in my note book. Money will come of it, you must believe me. Entwhistle will pay me good money for this serial.”
Still she persisted. “But you said yourself you do not have a story.”
“That is so, Mary, but the story will come.”
At last, she took his hand. “You never needed magnets before. You used an ink and pen. You made it up, Toby. Lord, look at the people you made. Mrs Morefallen. Did you need magnets to dream her up?”